


Losing It

by RhiannonMcBride



Category: X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't Have a Clue How to Tag This, F/M, Logan Being Nice, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-X1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 17:24:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10168037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhiannonMcBride/pseuds/RhiannonMcBride
Summary: Scot Summers is abducted for experimentation purposes. The X-Men get him back, but not entirely intact.This takes place after X1 and becomes an AU around the time of X2. Logan has returned. All else changes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this came to me in one of my darker moments. Wasn't sure I'd even write it, let alone post it. I like happy and fluffy -- this is angsty and dark. I will continue it, though I don't know how quickly. My mind has to go places I don't like to go to write this...

“Jean! Help me! Jean!”  


Her love's cry echoes in Jean Grey's head, an echo laced with burning pain and a frisson of fear. Her pen drops from nerveless fingers and she scarcely notices, let alone moves to catch it telekinetically. “Scott,” she whispers.  


She hadn't even known he was in trouble. He'd been following up on a rumored Stryker sighting in Phoenix, not even a very credible one. He shouldn't have been in any real danger.  


And she shouldn't have been able to hear him at such a distance. Yet she knows the touch of his mind.  


She stands and sprints from the room.  


~xXx~  


The next twenty-four hours pass in a blur of intelligence-gathering and hastily-assembled plans. The Professor has tracked Scott to an isolated location in the New Mexico desert southwest of Albuquerque that seems to be some sort of medical research facility, and while the professor hasn't sensed his presence, the whole thing smells of Stryker.  


Scott is drugged, unconscious, barely aware of the Professor's probings via Cerebro, and unable to provide any intel on his location. The guards, however, are a fount of information.  


“This smells like a trap,” Logan protests at several points, but not too loudly. He understands Scott is too valuable to be left n enemy hands.  


Reluctantly, Jean remains behind at the mansion. She knows she is far too emotionally compromised for this mission, but that doesn't mean she has to like it. She spends much of the time pacing, prowling the ground floor like a feral cat, snapping at those few who dared approach her.  


Finally she stalks into the Professor's office, where he sits serenely behind his desk, reading a book. “How do you do it?” she demands. “Stay behind and just wait?”  


He smiles softly. “I have infinite trust in the abilities of others.” Jean can see the faint worry-lines around his eyes as he continues. “But yes, it is difficult.” His smile grows reassuring. “They'll bring Scott back. Have faith.”  


~xXx~  


Logan stalks through the facility, claws extended, every sense on full alert. As he passes a cross corridor, he catches a faint whiff of Scott and turns, sniffing carefully.  


Scott. Multiple medicinal smells, hospital smells. The metallic scent of blood. The acrid stink of fear.  
Logan bolts down the corridor. The scents grow stronger, lead him down another corridor, then another. He reaches a pair of metal doors, like elevator doors, and Scott's scent is strong here.  


There's a button beside the door, and he pushes it, not expecting it to work, preparing to fry the electronics with his metal claws. But the doors slide open. Clearly no one is concerned that the prisoner might escape, and that's a bad sign.  


He realizes just how bad as he enters the room. Scott lies on a steel table, broad leather straps securing him at wrist, ankle, and chest. A blindfold of bandages circles his head, the stark white stained with crimson blood.  


“Scott,” he calls, “it's Logan. We're here to rescue you.” But the younger man remains unconscious.  


Logan cuts the straps with a single adamantium claw, hoists Scott onto his shoulder, and turns to leave.  


~xXx~  


“They've got him. They're coming home.”  


The Professor's declaration both thrills Jean and worries her. “Is he all right?”  


“He's injured but stable.”  


The time until the jet returns drags by, and Jean resumes her pacing until she hears the roof over the basketball court retracting. She races down to meet the jet.  


Logan and Hank unload Scott on a stretcher. He's pale and his head is circled by a bloodstained bandage, but he's still the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. “Take him to the treatment room,” she directs.  


She examines him slowly, taking his vitals, verifying that his sleep is indeed drug-induced and not due to head injury, examining every inch of him, saving the bloody bandage for last.  


She cuts it away, revealing a series of shallow cuts around his eyes. Only one, a slice through part of his left eyelid, is troublesome. She'll have to stitch it, without parting the lids and unleashing an optic blast.  
She probes the lid with a fingertip, then she freezes. It couldn't be. They wouldn't--  


Suddenly heedless of the danger, she pries his eyelids apart. All she sees is the raw, bloody tissue of his eye socket and a faint crackling of plasma from his severed optic nerve.  


With a shaking hand, she opens his other eye, but it, too, is gone.  


Jean stumbles back, hugging herself, tears streaming freely down her cheeks, as she absorbs the knowledge that this man she loves, a man of action, who loves fast cars and fast motorcycles, will spent the rest of his life blind.  


Logan appears in the doorway. “Is everything okay? I heard you cry out.”  


She hadn't realized she had. “Scott,” she says with a quavering voice. “They took his eyes.”  


Logan comes to her, folds her into his arms, rests her head on his shoulder, letting her tears spill onto his simple white t-shirt until she can't cry anymore.  


She wraps her arms around his waist, giving him a hug of thanks. “Why are you doing this?” she asks quietly. “You don't even like Scott.”  


_Of course I don't like him. He's got you._ The thought is so loud Jean can hear it without trying, then Logan adds a spoken reply. “I don't like him, but I sure as hell wouldn't wish this on him.”  


~xXx~  


Scott awakes, a confused flood of memories swirling in his brain. A tranquilizer dart impaling itself in his thigh. Being strapped down. Pain. Jean cradling him in her arms.  


He fights toward coherence, his hand going automatically to his temple to be sure his glasses are in place before he opens his eyes. Instead he finds an expanse of smooth gauze circling his head.  


More memory floods back. A cold voice calmly discussing the safest way to remove his eyes for study.  


His hands scrabble at the bandages. He has to know. He has to know now. But the pain echoing in his face at the rough press of his fingertips tells him all he needs to know.  


“Take it easy.” Logan's voice.  


“What the hell are you doing here” he growls.  


“Everyone else is passed out asleep. No one's slept in almost two days. Not until we had you back.”  


“It must be bad, if you're trying to be nice.”  


“Yeah.” The response is pure Logan. No sugarcoating. No bullshit.  


“My eyes are gone, aren't they?”  


“Yeah, Scott, they are.”  


He lets his hands fall from his face. “Take me to Jean.”  


Logan helps him sit up, his big hands awkward but surprisingly gentle. The swirling pain males him want to either vomit or pass out, but after a minute it subsides to a dull, pulsing ache and he is able to slide his feet down to the floor.  


Logan slings Scott's arm across his broad shoulders, wraps his arm around Scott's waist, and guides him from the infirmary up to the bedroom he shares with Jean. Logan stops when Scott's leg brushes the edge of the bed, and exhausted and shaking, Scott sinks onto the soft mattress.  


“You got it from here?” Logan asks.  


Scott makes the mistake of nodding, and the pain explodes in his head. He sucks in a ragged breath then says. “Yeah.”  


Logan touches him lightly on the shoulder. “I'm sorry, Scott.” His footsteps retreat and the door closes.  


Scott lies down gingerly, trying not to jar his throbbing head. Jean stirs beside him, murmurs his name sleepily, wraps an arm around his torso.  


He covers her arm with his, squeezing it lightly.  


“Everything's going to be okay,” she says, pillowing her head on his shoulder.  


He says nothing. He knows she's lying.  


~xXx~  


Scott awakes some time later. The pain in his head is sharp but tolerable, and he eases himself to a sitting position. “Jean?” he calls.  


Her mind brushes his. Clearly she was listening, waiting for him to wake. “I had a class to teach and there was no one to cover it. I'll be back soon.”  


Her mind withdraws, leaving him alone. His bladder is painfully full, too full to wait. He pictures the en suite bath and its relationship to the bed, sucks in a shaky breath, then rises.  


He steps forward, arms outstretched and groping. One step. Two. Three. Ten. He stumbles into a chair, straightens, edges forward again.  


Finally his fumbling hands brush the wall and he sidesteps along it until he reaches the bathroom door. He opens it and enters, hands held low now, searching. He finds the sink with the back of one hand, then the toilet with one knee. He stands before it, drops his boxer-briefs, hesitates, then turns and sits, like a girl, face burning.  


Once he's done, he finds his way back to the bedroom. His face is throbbing, his legs feel like lead, and he blunders forward, hunting for the bed. But all he finds is another expanse of wall.  


He turns, sinks to the floor, leans back against the wood paneling, tears streaming from empty sockets, soaking the bandages.  


Jean finds him there some time later. She settles beside him, draws him into her arms, holds him like a child.  


“I don't think I can do this,” he whispers.  


She kisses his cheek. “I love you. We'll figure out how to deal with this.”  


He clings to her words like a drowning man.


End file.
